Slide Show Yesterday, the National Western Stock Show took to the streets of downtown Denver with its annual parade. There were loads of longhorns, heaps of horses, copious cowboys, rafts of ranchers, and a jillion journalists to document their every move. But more noteworthy than the parade were the parade-goers…
Not too long ago, a dear friend of mine (Let’s call her something fabulous like… “Bianca”) called me up in hysterics. It seemed that her boyfriend of over a year (Let’s call him “Big Fat Jack Ass) had fallen out of love with her and decided it best to break…
Quick story: some friends of mine and I were at Six Flags Magic Mountain out in California. It was the late 80s, and we were freshmen in college, on our first road trip. We had, as college freshmen tend to have, plans and dreams. (More the latter than the former,…
This is some painful déjà vu. Was it not enough that it’s nearly 20 years later, and we still have a Bush in the White House? Do we really need to revisit American Gladiators? NBC apparently thinks so. The peacock network resorted to bringing back this product of the Reagan-era…
Having a child destroys your immune system to horror, real or imagined. Before the blessed event, you could laugh off The Exorcist, The Omen, or any of a thousand gory shockers with some wide-eyed tyke as either the prey or the spawn of Beelzebub. Afterward, you can’t even see the…
Since promising Armageddon in the leadoff bars of Straight Outta Compton, star-producer Ice Cube has been one canny career man. In recent years, he’s pulled up stakes in the foundering rap game and doesn’t seem to think twice about the cred damage that could come from pratfalling through PG family…
When I was twelve, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway totally screwed me over. After visiting the famed Brickyard and eagerly paying ten bucks to take “a lap around the track,” I was placed in a golf cart that putted around the asphalt at a not-entirely-death-defying 9 mph. This was not the…
Joshua (Fox)George Ratliff’s movie, a sort of satirical take on Rosemary’s Baby, came and went upon its release; seems no one got the joke about how parents (Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga, in this case) are scared shitless of their own children — especially the titular Joshua, played by Jacob…
The All New Super Friends Hour: Season One, Volume One (Turner) American Carny: True Tales From the Circus Sideshow (Koch Vision) Cary Grant: 4-Disc Collector’s Set (Republic) Casablanca (Warner Bros.) Death Sentence (Fox) Eagle vs. Shark (Miramax) Evil Roy Slade (TMG) Golden Door (Miramax) Happy Tree Friends: Complete Season One…
On December 14, I got a call from a good friend. Her tone was uncharacteristically formal, so I knew something was wrong. “Mark Travis was found dead in his studio,” she stoically told me. This news was shocking despite the fact that Travis had been in declining health for years,…
Ivar Zeile, the owner of Plus Gallery (2350 Lawrence Street, 303-296-0927) has often described his approach to showing contemporary art as “eclectic,” and in his case, that means embracing competing ideologies at the same time and in the same shows. The problem with this approach is that offerings of this…
Color as Field. It’s no exaggeration to say that Color as Field: American Painting 1950-1975 is one of the best shows presented in Denver in a generation. Filled with a who’s who of American art — Still, Rothko, Frankenthaler, Stella — it’s like a brief vacation into a world where…
Jane Austen is an anomaly. No other author aside from Shakespeare has sustained such modern acclaim and interest. The evidence is abundant: Austen’s success on the big screen includes classic versions, such as the 1996 Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle, Emma, as well as modern takes on Austen’s stories, such as 1995’s…
When a midlife crisis includes searching for an antenna-wearing childhood TV icon named Tamara Tomorrow instead of buying hair plugs and a red sports car, you’re either still living in your parents’ basement or you have an interesting sense of humor. In Music From a Sparkling Planet — a coming-of-age-meets-midlife-crisis…
It’s a good thing that actor Jonathan Bender has had years of experience with character acting: In Bender’s solo performance, In the Belly of the Whale, he plays nine distinct characters to tell an age-old story with a twist. “The main character is a spoken-word poet; his name is J.,”…
Vampires and werewolves have been fodder for fiction since long before Interview With the Vampire and An American Werewolf in London hit the big screen. So authors Lynda Hilburn and Carrie Vaughn will be in good company when they pair up this afternoon at the Denver Book Mall, 32 Broadway,…
once upon a midnight dreary while i pondered eak an dweary over a forgotten volume Wed., Jan. 16, 2008…
From ancient myths of sun gods to the Cheeto-orange tans of today, humans have constantly shown appreciation for the life-giving globe of super-heated plasma we call Sol. That love affair with the source of all life and energy is celebrated in SunWorks, an exhibit of art aimed at showing the…
Escargot and mimes aside, the United States could stand to take a cue from France. Here we boil twelve lovely days of Christmas down to one big blowout and a lame ditty about pipers piping and lords a-leaping. But overseas, the French do it right. The Fête des Rois —…
Everybody loves the underdog, and we can all relate to the misunderstood. It’s those very sentiments that might explain the longevity of Boulder’s cyclical MahlerFest, an annual symposium and concert series dreamed up by artistic director Robert Olson more than twenty years ago. The event — a tribute to that…
When John Harlin III first decided to tackle the Eiger (an Alpine mountain often translated as “the ogre”), he didn’t plan on his journey becoming the focus of the latest IMAX film to hit the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, The Alps. Harlin’s father, a mountaineering legend and pioneer…
What do you get when you combine High School Musical and Bring It On, minus the unhealthy levels of raging teenage hormones? The Rocky Mountain Theatre Association’s Festivention, an annual convention of theater groups from Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Utah. This year’s event, which begins today in Lakewood, will…
